Adventures in Starting My Own Firm: Websites

From what I’ve researched, it’s your most basic marketing tool, and if you are serious about your firm, it’s a must have.

So, I’ve been trying to figure all of that out the last couple weeks: style, formatting, what are the different pages I’ll have on it, etc. I have a general idea of what I want, so the content isn’t too difficult to figure out. I do have to work on stocking up some blog entries before publishing it, so I don’t have a blog section…with no blog content.

But…before I get to that, I have to actually create a website where all of this stuff is going. I’m not completely foreign to this stuff, since I help manage the website for Haiti Scholarships, and set up and manage the website for The Merry Ministers. The Merry Ministers is kind of a simple and straightforward site, and I know my firm site has to be a notch more professional than that one. So, I did some research and talked to my tech source, and found out that I need to: 1) purchase the domain from one place, 2) link my domain to wordpress (I’m being kind of stubborn about this–I figure if I already use this format for two other websites, I don’t want to learn a whole different UI–hehe, I’m trying to use techy terms, but I have no idea if I’m using it in the right context or not–to manage another website), then 3) host it through another place, and finally 4) figure out what theme I want to purchase–since I’m not gonna build this thing myself.

Step One was frustrating as all hell. Apparently my first AND last name are pretty common on the website domain area, and anything generic about law, law firms, and Southern California has been taken long ago. The other thing about my full name is that it is l-o-n-g. Maybe not the greatest for marketing purposes. After a frustrating evening, and intense help from Busta and Jeff, I finally decided on a domain, and was ready for Step Two.

Step Two. Not too bad until I had to authenticate the domain that I had just registered in Step One. I had to go through the “DNS” to add something on the original domain site so that it would link to my wordpress page. I was able to figure that out, but it took about a day for wordpress to recognize it and update it. But still, not too bad for someone who had no idea what she was doing.

Step Three. Shit kinda hit the fan. Not really, since there isn’t any crazy urgency, but at this point I couldn’t figure it out on my own anymore, which was frustrating. I registered with a host (hmm, not sure if that’s the correct terminology), and again had to prove that I was the owner of the domain I had originally registered for. So I tried to input whatever information it asked me for…then I tried to look at the website to see what showed up…and it was saying something about too many re-routing loops or whatever. BUT, I just tried it now…and it seems to be working! So, maybe I’m not as technologically disabled as I thought I was.

I’m still using my tech genius friend to make sure it’s all done the right way, and then it’s off to figure out themes and content, yay!